One of the silver linings about having the entertainment industry shut down during the COVID pandemic is that I’m getting play around with making a lot more props. One thing that I’ve wanted to make for a while are peas for the three shell game.
I had some time some the other day and made some molds for the peas. Then I picked up some urethane and made them. The urethane I used was a 40A on the Shore Hardness Scale.
They have a little bit of give, but are pretty firm. I like them so far!
One of the first routines that I really thought out and wrote a script for was my Card to Mouth Routine. I published it a few years ago in Vanish Magazine and I’ve taught it in my lectures for a long time.
Vanish Magazine just put out a collection of the second year of their magazine and my trick is in one of their promo pics for the book!
This is a fun routine and while Card to Mouth might not be a trick that’s currently socially acceptable to do, it’s still worth looking at how I put a frame around the card to mouth premise.
One of the hardest things about creating magic right now is that due to restrictions I can’t really audience test things. I’ve written about my endings to the three shell game on this blog before and one that I’ve started doing post-COVID is the solid shell game.
One way to break things in are on live streams. My buddy was doing a live stream a few night ago and needed a guest, so I popped in, hung out and worked on some material.
Here’s the shell game from that live stream:
It’s coming along, just being able to do for something and not the wall at home makes a big difference! If you’ve got stuff you’re working on, go out and be a guest on someone’s live stream. It’s a much better space that doing your own live stream show, and there’s a lot less expectation for you to carry the show.
In yesterday’s blog post I wrote about a four ace production that I saw on social media and why it wasn’t good. This morning I’m going into my social media and found a four ace production from about a year ago. If I remember correctly this is from Principia by Harapan Ong.
Here’s why the is a better trick that the one that I shared yesterday:
Is the ace trick that I did the best? No, however it’s way better than the one that I shared yesterday. Think about what you’re sharing before you put it out there.
When I perform and have tried doing the solid shell kicker, it never played how I’d like. I think there’s a disconnect between the shell game and when the solid shell is reveals, it’s a little out of left field. I was playing around with an ending as a topper to the kicker of the solid shells that I found in an old notebook of mine.
You can read this post about it from about a month ago.
I don’t think I ever posted video of it. Here’s the first version of it. I need to remake it, but you get the idea
I’ve done this a few times over a livestream and so far it’s playing really well. I can’t wait to try it out for real people, whenever that will be!
My current book that I’m reading is Scripting Magic by Pete McCabe. This book is interesting and I’m only about 145 pages into volume one and it’s pretty good. When I was younger I used to have a loose script, but nothing formally written down. As I’ve gotten older I’ve realized the huge advantages to writing down what you say in your show.
For me writing out a script makes it a lot easier to see where jokes should be. It also makes it easier to work on them. One thing I don’t like very much is the script format that this book uses when it’s showing scripts. I find them hard to read, however I’m 99% sure it’s simply because I’m not used to that format. I think the more I use it the easier it will get to read.
I’m working on my Polaroids to Envelope trick that I wrote about a week or so ago. I decided to write out the script using the format in Scripting Magic. What I did was simply use a practice video and wrote down what I said and added the actions.
In the version in the document above it’s pretty basic and narrative. It’s got a rough presentation hook, and a chuckle in it, but it needs more work.
For the Polaroids to Envelope magic trick I’m working on, the last technical step is to clean up the handling. The initial handling had three Tenkai Vanishes, which is fine, but redundant. I also think that if you do the same false transfer over and over, you need a convincer to show both hands empty.
Here’s the tweaked handling:
One thing that I decided with showing both hands empty was that I didn’t want to make both hands being empty part of the vanish. I wanted to show both hands, just not show the dirty hand as a “moment” of the trick. In the video you’ll notice that I show both hands as I turn the envelope over.
The technical end is finished for now. The technical part is something that may evolve over time, and something that’s never completely done.
The last couple of days I’ve been writing about doing Goshman’s Cards Thru Newspaper and how it morphed to Cards To Jumbo Card. Today we’re going to talk about the next leap it’s taking, and that’s starting to get rid of the cards. In place of the four regular cards, I’m using Polaroid pictures of my daughter and our pets.
The cool thing about these is that they are slightly smaller than playing cards, which makes a lot of the sleight of hand much easier! The nice thing about coming up with a method that doesn’t use a duplicate, they pictures could be of people from the audience, or of a company’s products, or whatever.
Once again, the video below wasn’t intended for people to watch other than me. It’s a “proof of concept” video that was for me to watch and see how well everything worked and also to remind me of what I was doing.
Things are starting to come together, but there’s still one thing I don’t like, and that’s the jumbo card. Tomorrow we’ll talk about how I got rid of that.
The other night while watching TV with the family I was fiddling with a deck fo cards and came up with a strange color change. There’s a lot wrong with it, and in its current state it’s not a good color change.
The main problem with it is that it’s not good for video. I can see the flash that happens when you palm the card being hidden in a live show, but not on video. Also there are better ways to do a color change.
It was fun to play with.
In yesterday’s blog post, I mentioned it took a bit of work figuring out what to do with the penny in the trick where a penny changes into two silver dollars. The challenge was that the coin change happens immediately, however I need to keep the coin hidden for the whole routine. Based on the conditions I posted I can’t just ditch it as my hands need to remain in the frame. Adding to the problem is that I also have two coins finger palmed the entire routine (until the end).
The solution I came up with, which should have been pretty obvious was to attach attach a magnet to the penny as the silver dollars already have magnet in them. I took the penny shell from a Dime and Penny set and used teflon tape to hold the magnet.
I figured using a shell would allow the penny to sit flat on on the silver dollar. The flatter it sat, the less chance there would be for me to accidentally knock it off, and it won’t rattle as the coin moved.
The “penny solution” brings me back to something Nick Lewin always says, I love how elaborate this 30 second coin routine has become!
